


Draco Malfoy and The Mudblood Governess

by suliswrites



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Gags, Implied/Referenced Torture, Light Bondage, POV Draco Malfoy, Sexual Content, Spanking, War, familial shaming, genocidal rhetoric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:42:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23719150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suliswrites/pseuds/suliswrites
Summary: In which Draco witnesses something as a child that he doesn’t understand.Time brings the knowledge of previously forbidden subjects, as well as the constant torment of a certain frizzy-haired, buck-toothed, perfect know-it-all.Then Draco begins to understand all too well: his father has a type.And so, apparently, does he.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy, Hermione Granger/Lucius Malfoy
Comments: 155
Kudos: 520





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my twisted little Draco Malfoy rabbit hole. Thanks for jumping in. 
> 
> Deep gratitude to my betas and friends [ketos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ketos/profile), Constance and [oftachancer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oftachancer/works) for their encouragement and guidance with this piece. 
> 
> Reviews and kudos are greatly appreciated and keep the fire lit!

. . .

Draco loves his new governess.

When they told him his old one would be leaving them, he was so happy. Not because he’d get a new one, but because he thought it might mean he’d get to go to Hogwarts early. Or Durmstrang. Depending on which parent he is talking to.

But no, his father reminded him he had many more years to wait before he could go. He’d sulked, thinking he’d give anything for a wand. The house elves brought him extra sweets to try to get him to stop sulking.

Then it turned out to be the best thing that had ever happened because she arrived. A live-in, like the other one, but she is _different._

A _mudblood_ governess.

The first mudblood Draco thinks he’s ever met.

She’s ‘just out of Uni,’ she told him, when he asked how old she was. The other one had been sooooooooo old. He’s not sure what Uni is, but it sounds very un-pureblood. There’s so much he doesn’t know how to make sense of about her.

She’s beautiful, though, he knows that for certain.

He draws pictures of her when no one is looking. Hides them between the mattress and the frame, where he’s pretty sure the elves don’t clean.

She’s warm and firey, in a way no pureblood witch he knows is. Certainly not his mother.

She plays with him on the floor, pretends to be animals with the noises and everything. Makes faces. She’s fun and full of laughter.

She talks back to his father when she disagrees with something he’s said. Talks back! He’s not seen a single other living witch or wizard do that. And for some reason his father lets her.

She looks so different from his mother. Long curly brown hair that boings when he pulls it. Creamy-tanned skin - she’s always out in the sun. A line of summer freckles across her nose. Eyes that have his favorite kind of trouble, not the cold rules and manners of his parents.

He can muss her hair, grab at her sweater, get mud on her, and she just laughs. Laughs and smiles and throws mud back at him. His mother would just get frustrated and yell at him for that.

He knows he’s not supposed to like a mudblood more than purebloods, but he does. She’s the most incredible person he’s ever met.

He wants to know more of them. He wonders why it’s alright for a mudblood to be a governess but not alright for them to be other things. She’s so smart and pretty. He thinks she could be anything she wants.

Draco wonders if she bothers his father, if her being a mudblood does.

Because when they sit down for afternoon tea all together, Draco sometimes catches his father watching her, staring at her with a very serious expression that doesn’t quite look like anger but Draco thinks is very similar. It almost looks like he wants to hurt her, like he’s threatening to with his eyes.

Sometimes, (Draco notices it’s only when his Mother is not there to scold his father for being rude,) his father even looks his governess up and down, the way he’s seen him do at horses he’s thinking of buying.

This worries Draco. He doesn’t want her to feel funny and leave.

Most worrisome of all, sometimes Draco has caught his governess turn a bright red in response to his father’s looks.

He worries that she is embarrassed by his father’s behavior, that she feels unwelcome, even hated. But then she seems to be smiling all through tea after, so Draco thinks it must not bother her too much. That’s good.

But even if she doesn’t choose to leave, Draco begins to worry that his father will fire her, if he hates her so much. Then he won’t get to see her anymore.

It begins to keep him up at night. He lays in his bed trying to think how he can get her to stay, to keep being his governess. What he could say or do.

To make himself feel better he imagines great adventures he and she will go on, ones that will be so amazing and full of complishments that even his father will be forced to admit how wonderful she is.

That’ll work. They’ll leave together. On an adventure. And come back famous and with loads of complishments and gifts and knowing about all sorts of things. And then his father will let her stay.

. . .

One night, Draco wakes to the sound of screaming.

It happens once. Then again.

He gets out of bed and opens his door, peeking his head out into the corridor.

The screams continue. But they’re confusing. They don't sound quite like pain, but then sometimes they do, and he can’t tell what it really is, between the two sounds. But the voice reminds him of her voice.

Fear strikes him. Something horrible is happening to his governess! And she needs his help!

He follows the sounds out of his wing and past his mother’s room, glancing in quickly to see if she’s there and will help him, tell him what's happening.

But the room is cold and dark. That’s right, he forgot: tonight is one of those nights where Mother stays in London at the townhouse.

The scream sounds again, louder. But it changes at the end. It almost sounds like one of the animals that live on the grounds.

Oh no, could it be some kind of terrible curse? Something turning her into a beast or monster like in one of his books? No - he can’t let that happen.

He keeps following the sound, all the way to the east wing. That’s when he realizes it’s coming from his father’s private rooms.

The sounds grow louder and faster as he approaches the door, and now he can hear another sound with them - smacks, like a book slamming down on a desk.

He reaches out, terrified of what he will find, but determined to help her. He grasps the large handle and swings open the door.

What he sees he doesn’t understand.

They turn their heads to him at the sound of the door opening. His father. His governess.

She’s on the bed. On her hands and knees like a dog. She doesn’t have any clothes on.

She looks hot and sweaty, like she’s been running. Her curly hair is a mess. There are ropes around her wrists that connect to the posts of the bed. Her bottom is bright red, like she’d been spanked for misbehaving. But adults don’t get spankings. And he’s never seen someone look happy while being spanked, and when he first opened the door her eyes looked full of that same kind of happiness as when she eats sweets.

His father is standing by the bed, his clothes on, and he is in the process of tying a piece of fabric around her mouth. But he looks so different as well, unlike any version of his father Draco’s ever seen. He too looks like he’s been running, strands of his hair have fallen out of place, and his white shirt-sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, which Draco’s never ever seen him do before.

His governess looks shocked and embarrassed, the fabric between her open lips cutting into her cheeks. His father looks slightly surprised, but never embarrassed, remaining so calm that he even finishes knotting the fabric around her mouth with a tight jerk.

Then his father reaches for the canopy bed curtain and pulls it shut, shielding Draco’s governess from view.

Draco continues to stand numbly at the door, his hand on the knob.

Before his father comes over to him, Draco watches him lean behind the curtain. He hears the sound of a kiss, and a whisper in his father’s voice that sounds like: “Don’t lose count.” Which doesn’t make any sense.

Then his father calmly walks over and ushers Draco back out into the corridor, closing the door behind them.

Draco stands wide-eyed, staring up at him, not knowing what to say.

He wonders if he’s done something wrong. His father waits patiently for him to speak.

“Is - Is she alright? I heard...”

“She’s alright,” his father answers him softly, a slight smile on his lips. Why is he smiling?

“But… she was screaming,” Draco says.

His father lets out a sigh. “You were not meant to hear that. I got carried away and forgot to cast a silencing spell. Your father can be somewhat reckless, when it comes to certain things.” He smiles again, in that sideways way which Draco knows always means he’s smiling about something that isn’t for Draco to know. And he’d used words he didn’t know, so Draco knew that his father had said something for himself and not for Draco.

Then his father smiled a warm smile that definitely _was_ meant for him. A comforting one. “You needn’t worry about her.”

Draco nods faintly. He wouldn’t question his father on anything.

He feels like he should leave but he can’t help but ask -

“Are _you_ alright? You look....” Draco tries not to gape but he’s never seen his father look messy or out of place.

His father crosses his arms over his chest, barely holding back another one of those smiles Draco wishes he got to know about. “I am perfectly alright, thank you. Now back to bed with you.”

Wanting to be a good son and wanting the comfort of his room, Draco turns to go, but he so so so badly wants to know. He has to know.

He turns slowly back around to his father, who remains in front of the door watching him.

Draco pulls at the fabric of his pyjama sleeve. “I - I don’t understand.”

His father places a strong hand on his shoulder. “When you’re older, Draco. Now go back to your room.”

Draco nods.

“Yes, Father.”

. . .


	2. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Readers,
> 
> Thank you for such a wonderful response to Chapter One! Excited to share Part Two with you today. 
> 
> As always, much love and thanks to my betas and friends [ketos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ketos/profile), Constance and [oftachancer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oftachancer/works) for their encouragement and guidance with this work. 
> 
> Your reviews and kudos are always deeply appreciated! 
> 
> Enjoy,  
> sulis

. . .

The first time he saw Hermione Granger, Draco’s first thought was how much she reminded him of his mudblood governess. 

Like a ghost come back to haunt him. The mirror image in miniature, the very same appearance and temperament. 

Every day she did something new that brought back some memory, something to cement the similarity. 

By this age, Draco knew what he’d seen that night as a child. He knew what those looks at afternoon tea had been. He knew what his father and his mudblood governess had been doing. 

_“Don’t lose count.”_

How many had it been, to count to? _Had_ she lost count? When his father walked back in the room, had she forgotten the number? And if she had, how had his father punished her for it?

Draco wondered at the answer to that question for years.

What else had they done? How _often_ had they done it? 

His mudblood governess had stayed on for another full year. Though Draco never heard screaming again. And none of the three of them ever said a word about what he’d seen. 

Did some witches really like that sort of thing as much as people said they did? Ropes and gags and… spanking? Or was it only mudbloods?

He wondered. There was still so little Draco knew about them. Or witches of any kind, for that matter.

Though he had learned one vital thing from witnessing his father’s tryst: Mudbloods might very well be beneath them, but apparently you could still fuck them. 

In second year, when they ran into Granger at Flourish and Blotts, Draco wondered if his father noticed the similarity between her and his old governess as well. 

His father had spoken to her, had even embarrassed Draco by mentioning how much better she was doing in class than him. (Because, as he told his father absolutely everything, Draco had also told him all about the mudblood in his class who never shut up and had the answer to every question.) 

That day in the bookshop, Hermione had of course, like his governess, talked back to his father. 

And his father had stared at her. For far longer than Draco liked. 

Granger kept out performing him. Kept annoying the bloody shit out of him. Kept getting smarter and prettier and more daring and perfect. Every bloody year. 

She even punched him, the savage. _Hard._

Muggle violence. Oh, his father’s face when he’d heard about that. 

Draco couldn’t decide whether his expression had been appalled or impressed. Both, likely. 

He made a note to himself not to mention things about Granger to his father again. 

And so the school year continued, and Draco stored up every run in with her in his mind. Left every story unspoken, determined to keep them for himself. 

Draco had been looking forward to the World Cup all summer. He knew his father would make sure they had the very best seats. 

Then, astoundingly, there she was again. Surrounded by a hoard of disgusting, hollering Weasleys, no less. 

And again, his father stared. And she stared back; at his father, not at him. 

A fragrant memory of freshly poured tea had overwhelmed his senses. 

Draco stewed over that traded look for over a year. Hating them both for it, for some reason. Adoring them both. Wanting attention from them both. Wanting them to never have met, to stay in their separate corners of his world. 

Sometimes he wanted Granger to not even exist. 

No, that wasn’t true. He took it back. 

At night, he dreamt of them. 

Dreamt of his father whipping her. Fucking her. Of her moaning for it like a whore. Draco woke, morning after morning, covered in his own cum, disgusted with himself. 

By his 5th year at Hogwarts, his relationship with his father was changing. There was a constant edge to his father at all times, a stress he was carrying but refused to talk to Draco about. Something was building, and no one would tell him what. 

Granger was swottier than ever. And up to something. 

Draco joined the Inquisitorial Squad, determined to catch her at whatever it was, and to make his father proud. 

He didn’t let himself give much thought to the fact that his fantasy of ‘catching’ Granger involved tying her up, gagging her and spanking her. Making her count them, flushed and screaming. 

_Don’t lose count._

But even when he did catch her, nothing half so good as that came of it. In fact, the whole world fell to shit. 

He knew she’d been there, with Potter, in the Department of Mysteries, when his father was arrested. They’d seen one another that night. _Fought_ each other. 

Draco could barely process the image that thought conjured for him. Spells flying. Adrenaline, danger. Granger and his father hurling hexes at one another, out of breath. It was incomprehensible. 

And then his father was gone. He and his mother were left to fend for themselves. Draco was left to finally step into the role he’d been preparing for his entire life, to fill his father’s shoes. 

They were more uncomfortable than he’d anticipated. 

That constant edge he’d seen hanging about his father now hung over him, and Draco soon realized it hadn’t been ‘stress’ so much as mortal peril and the fight for survival. 

He channeled all of his energy into succeeding, for he and his mother’s sake. He would do what his father could not. He would make him proud. Further still, he would make the Dark Lord proud. 

It would be like a great adventure. Full of accomplishment. 

But he couldn’t. In the end, he couldn’t. He had failed. Again.

Even having his father back didn’t keep the next hellscape from crashing in around them. Having his father back almost made it worse, actually. Watching him mope around the manor, wandless, drinking himself into oblivion. 

Then those idiots had to go and get themselves captured. 

He caught the moment his father saw her amongst them. Beneath the haze of whisky there was a brief flash of conflict, and laced with it, solemn disappointment. Then, in the swig of another glass, both were replaced with resignation, bitter and hollow. 

Granger, still obnoxiously clever, had managed the stinging jinx to Potter’s face in time. 

So Draco found himself between them once again: His father at his side, urgently whispering in his ear, “Is it him?” And Granger, pleading at him from across the room with her big, weepy brown eyes. 

He felt like he was choosing between their lives. 

So he said: “I can’t be sure.” 

Her safety cost him his own. What a sodding miserable excuse of a Slytherin he was. 

Draco had found out he could endure many more castings of Crucio before dying than he’d previously assumed. Collectively as a family, they might very well have set some kind of a record.

He’d also thought shared pain brought people closer together. But Draco found this strongly not to be the case. He felt alone from every which way. And his mother and father seemed further apart than ever, barely even looking one another in the eye. 

The fact that he and his parents managed to survive to the point of the final battle was a bleeding miracle. And that was before the fiendfyre. 

She’d managed to survive too. Of course she had. And she shined even more brilliantly in the flame and destruction. 

He’d hated it all more than ever then, everything they’d been made to be a part of, from either side. 

And when the giant oaf came into the courtyard carrying Potter’s lifeless body, Draco found himself watching only his father and Granger. His father looked relieved, though uneasy. Granger looked like she’d lost a limb. 

When his father called to him to join them, Draco had wavered. Though he’d never understood more just how very much his father loved him. 

He had seen him running through the castle, without a wand. Dodging the green flash of killing curses, calling out his name. 

“Come, Draco.” Holding out his waiting hand, looking the fool with the entire courtyard watching. 

When his father had called to him, the Dark Lord standing by waiting, Draco had glanced across the rubble strewn with bodies and seen the look Granger was giving him.

All fear and hope. Both pleading and demanding. The same look as on his father’s face. 

They’d never seemed to him more clearly alike than in that moment. Both asking him to choose them. 

And the realization came with absolute certainty, suffocating as the crowd that watched him: 

They, they two, were the polar forces which had guided his entire life. 

. . . 


	3. Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hoping these turbulent times find you safe and healthy. Life is chaotic at the moment, but I'm pleased to finally have an update to share. For anyone waiting on "The Unforgivables," I'm deep into my Chapter 10 draft, rest assured! Bird by bird. 
> 
> Sincere thanks to my incredible alpha Constance and my brilliant beta [elle_morgan_black](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_morgan_black/works) for their help on this. 
> 
> TW: New Tags! Please read and heed accordingly. This chapter adds genocidal rhetoric, war, familial shaming and implied/referenced torture.
> 
> Enjoy and be well.  
> -sulis

. . . .

There wasn’t an expression that didn’t suit his father’s face.

The detached acceptance, when the Wizengamot announced his father’s lenient sentence.

The icy indifference, when his mother left one morning without so much as a word spoken between them.

The thick tension of rage, each day the Prophet smeared the Malfoy divorce and ruin through the public muck.

And the quickly hidden _something_ Draco saw, every time he accidentally met his father’s eye.

Even that whisper of unnamed emotion, furrowing at his father’s brow - that something Draco found himself wishing was agony or self-loathing - even that looked like the model example of itself.

Draco had seen many of those same emotions in the mirror, on so similar a face. But on him, they looked somehow ill-fitting.

In his father all manner of misery looked graceful as a statue. In Draco it looked desperate; shifty. Like trying to stuff a seventh year in first year’s robes. As if he wasn’t built to stomach it.

He hated his father’s elegant suffering.

Even in disgrace and ruin he was the sodding perfect Lord of the Manor. You could see it in his blood shot eyes, still haunted by that inherent thirst and talent for survival. No matter what befell his father, Draco knew an undercurrent of will still raged beneath the surface. Capable, determined and unstoppable; down for only a brief moment but certain to rise again. In short, a Malfoy. A Malfoy in the way Draco had never been able to get himself to be.

Draco didn’t look like a tragically deposed Lord of the Manor bound for some kind of forgiving resurrection. He looked like someone else polyjuiced in his body. Ill-suited to the distinct nobility of the Malfoy profile, and unable to bear the weight.

Which all the time got bloody _heavier,_ even when the damned war and all its destructive trappings were supposed to be over.

It would drive him mad if he didn’t get out of this house. Stark raving. Tearing at the familiar, mocking wallpaper of his quarters. That same damn pattern he’d looked at his whole damn life.

Draco paced his room in the early hours of the morning, knowing he had nowhere to go.

The remnants of what had been ‘his side,’ had never really been his, and weren’t there to return to. The new world being made by all the others, by _Granger,_ didn’t have a space cut for him.

Still, fantasies of that new world assaulted him in the middle of other thoughts. Visions of her: bright and shiny and thriving at the center of it. A veritable heroine, finally on her pedestal.

He allowed his thoughts to wander into daydreams. Of being welcomed by her; of being given something to do. A way to change the look on people’s faces when they heard his name. When they caught the color of his hair rounding the corner.

His Governess had once said to him, as she ruffled his hair with a laugh, _“No one will ever mistake you, Draco, for being anything other than a Malfoy.”_

Fuck it all to hell.

Even as a sodding ferret he’d been recognizable as a Malfoy. That name he’d carried in pride like a shield his whole life now hung over him like a curse.

But if someone like her, like them, if some perfect, luminary mudblood were to cleanse him of his curse…

It was his favorite fantasy.

Most days, like this day, he spent laying around his quarters, moping, getting himself off to feel good for a few minutes. Those brief respites of pleasure: his eyes scrunched tight, stroking himself to visions of Granger perched atop him, curls trailing down her spine, her head falling back with moan as she slammed down on his straining cock -

Gods, if it didn’t make him come every time.

Somehow he knew she’d be loud. All that prim, tight-lipped virtue would crumble away, and in its wake there’d be the most depraved, needy words, frantic pleas and delicate little gasps.

The dream of having her bound and bucking for his palm on her arse had evolved into a million other visions: her splayed thighs trembling for him, muscles clenching against restraints. That sting of shock in her voice when she cried out his name at his first savage thrust.

During the day, she would be publicly affectionate with him and praise him for his heroic change and growth. They would accomplish meaningful things, side by side, and the world would marvel at the new, reformed Draco Malfoy. Then come the night, he’d have her on her knees, he’d bring her to the edge again and again, watch her struggle against the ropes and groan around her gag as he took ownership of her.

She’d be the perfect heroine swot for everyone else, and a compliant little whore for him.

That was the problem. Thoughts of her never came without both fantasies. Draco never could imagine his redemption without imagining some release for his darkness. Just as he couldn’t imagine fucking her without also craving her approval. Maybe she could be both. Maybe Granger needed both too.

And then there were the other fantasies that would spring, unbidden, into his mind throughout the day. Fantasies that terrified him.

He’d see her photograph in the prophet, waving to a celebrating crowd, and imagine her hand in his.

He’d hear the gossip of her leaving the red-haired oaf, and imagine his arm thrown possessively around her shoulders. He’d close his eyes and be walking with her down Diagon Alley, their strides falling into step together as she curled into him, the scent of her, the warmth of her, all his.

Childish. Absurd.

The longing for it both sustained and disgusted him.

Hopeless as those fantasies felt - deluded, really - Draco knew something had to change. He had to find or make a new place in the world. Or find some blasted peace until he did.

His head throbbed. He wiped a palm over his brow and held it tight over his eyes.

Draco was living with a void of a person; like the Ogdens had burned a hole right through his father and what was left of _The Great Lucius Malfoy_ was slowly trickling down it into black empty nothing. The void within his father had a pull Draco felt to his marrow, sucking at him all the time, to drown him too. Like a bloody dementor holed up in that study, pacing, not his father. Draco imagined himself twenty years in the future, pacing the same study, slowly dripping down the same damned hole.

If he didn’t get away from his father’s whirlpooling destruction, he knew they’d be driven to a confrontation Draco didn’t want to have. Though at times it was all he wanted, even if he knew he was likely to come out on the losing side.

“Stop slouching, boy. Get up. I need to speak with you.”

Uncovering his eyes, Draco looked up to see his Grandmother, Phaedra Malfoy, standing in the landscape over his desk.

She willfully ignored him for eighteen bloody years and then she came to his room to tell him what to do? Suddenly his fuckupery mattered, did it?

“Grandmother,” Draco nodded. “Sod off.”

Her elegant face contorted to bug-eyed outrage.

“Don’t you dare speak to me that way, Draco Malfoy! I’d hex you myself if I had the body! Of course your father suddenly can’t be bothered to teach you your place.”

Draco stood and walked to the painting. “Father can’t be bothered to do much of anything these days. Go tell him off, then.”

“Salazar knows I’ve tried. He’s removed all of the paintings from his study, and I can’t reach him. With your Mother gone, I’ve had to resort to you.”

The removal of paintings caught Draco’s attention. “Why would father do such a thing?”

“He and Abraxas had a row. Lucius always did have a terrible temper.” His grandmother shook her head disparagingly, as though this weren’t a trait of every Malfoy man to walk the earth for the past several centuries.

“So did grandfather,” Draco answered, crossing his arms. “What was it about?”

“I don’t know. Abraxas didn’t have time to tell me before Lucius did away with his portrait. I can’t find him. You know what that means.”

It meant that his father had put his Grandfather's portrait in the attic. Warded with a plethora of runes to protect the illegal, unregistered dark relics it housed, the attic was the only place within the manor from which inhabitants of portraits could not leave their frames. There were a few paintings that had been up there for centuries, having done one thing or another to anger the various Malfoy Lords throughout time.

When Draco was young, he’d thought there was really nothing that could be done to a portrait. They were already dead, afterall. And if you maimed their painting, they might suffer a bit of abuse, but in the end they merely moved to their neighbors’ frame. The Malfoy attic, however, was an unspeakable sentence for a portrait: that of endless limbo. (If you were lucky, it was a limbo without a sheet tossed over your face, though many weren’t.)

Your only escape from that fate once condemned to it, was the unlikely hope that a Malfoy descendant would someday restore you to your place in the lower levels of the manor. But some Malfoys lived their entire lives without going up there, let alone giving bugger all about a portrait that enraged their Great-Grandfather. The few times Draco had been up there, he’d heard them, calling out from under their sheets, begging to be brought back down into the house.

To be put in the attic was to be forgotten, or to be warned with the threat of being forgotten.

“I’m sure father meant it only as a temporary punishment. He’ll restore him to his place when he calms down. Cool your cauldron, Grandmother.”

At this Phaedra’s eyes darkened to a stormy slate. “No, Draco. After what Septimus told me he witnessed, I don’t believe so.”

When Draco refused to take her bait and beg for the tale, she huffed with displeasure before blurting out, “ _He took a candle to him._ His own father! Apparently Abraxas called him ‘a perverted weakling’ and then Lucius took a candle from the nearest table and held it to his frame. My son did such a thing!”

Draco felt his eyes bulging right out of their sockets.

“Father _set fire_ to Grandfather’s portrait?”

Phaedra nodded vigorously, a dramatic tear streaking out of her left eye. “Septimus said Lucius came to his senses a moment later and quickly put the flames out. But then to take him to the attic, Draco, the _attic!_ You must go up there this instant and return him to his rightful place. ”

She came to the edge of the frame, urgency knitting her pale brow.

“Your father is no longer fit to lead this family.”

. . . .

Draco hated duty. But now, the ever dutiful Grandson and heir, he found himself trudging up the stairs, creaking open the thick wooden door, a puff of dust immediately billowing forth in every direction.

The voices started straight away, muffled from beneath the sheets.

_“A Malfoy deserves his ri-”_

_“Mercy, please -”_

_“Hello? - Hello? -”_

_“Please, it’s been 200 years -”_

Draco slammed his fist into the door. “ _QUIET.”_

Silence immediately fell.

He couldn’t help smiling slightly at the rush of power.

“Grandfather, it's Draco. Where are you?” he called out.

From the very back of the room, deep in the shadows, the answer - “Here, Draco. Good lad. Get this filthy thing off of me this instant.”

Draco lit his wand as he reached the back of the room, throwing the sheet back off of the only portrait leaning against the far wall.

His Grandfather certainly appeared worse for wear. Squinting at the sudden light, Abraxas Malfoy could only be described as deliriously furious. Even his mustache was in disarray, the usual precision of his beard now a disheveled mess; the standard, sullen flaring of his nostrils, even more pronounced. He looked as if he’d climb right out of his frame and storm downstairs if he could.

“Merlin. Steady on, Grandfather,” Draco said. “What brought this about, then?”

Abraxas’ jaw tightened. “Your coward of a father. A shame to this house. Didn’t even have the nerve to look me in the eye as he left me here. A waste of my seed. The salazar-damned _coward._ ”

Draco took a step back, leaning his weight against an old crate. “Is this about the Prophet then? The latest opinion piece on father and his lack of sentence?”

“No, boy,” Abraxas grit out, eyes glazing with disgust, “This is about your Father losing his bollocks. That mudblood chit should never have been let through the gates.”

Draco felt his throat tighten. He forced out the word he’d wanted to say for weeks. “Granger?”

“Who? No, boy - that so-called ‘Governess’ of yours. Absurd.”

But that was ages ago. Surely Grandfather wasn’t just learning of his father’s dalliance with his Governess now. “What are you talking about?”

“I made him end it, when you were still a boy. Soon as I realized it had become more than the Lord of our name fucking the help. The fact that I even had to press it is an abomination. And now, _now_ I find out that despite ending it, he’s been following her scent like some needy lap dog. For over a decade.” Abraxas spit to his feet. “Disgrace to our name. He’s lost our fortune, our standing, and now this? Shedding tears like some bloody Hufflepuff over scum.”

Draco’s mind all but short circuited. His father would never. His father could never. For over a decade?

The shock was impossible to hide from his voice. “You saw father _cry?”_

The very idea was inconceivable. As inconceivable as Lucius Malfoy carrying a proverbial torch for a mudblood servant.

Abraxas nodded solemnly. “Don’t you ever let me catch you doing anything so ridiculous.”

“Why was Father crying?”

It was a question Draco found himself both delighted and afraid to hear the answer to.

“Mourning,” Abraxas forced out an indignant huff. “As if a wizard can mourn a cockroach.”

Draco braced his hand against the crate behind him. The memory of her freckled nose, scrunching in laughter, flooded his vision. The aching for her assaulted him and the vicious need for the comfort of her arms tore at his chest.

But before Draco could complete the fullness of that memory, his Grandfather continued. “The bitch was cleansed in a revel just before the battle. And my pathetic excuse for a son sits around crying about it, when he should have done it himself. Or at least claimed the credit, even if he was too useless to take part. Maybe then the Dark Lord would have treated us with the respect this family deserves.”

Cleansed. _Cleansed._

Was that the word for what it meant to rip someone like that from the world? Her laughter in his memory became terror then, and Draco imagined her screaming. His Governess screaming for help - and no one giving it.

Draco had been to revels. He’d been forced to participate in order to earn the mark. He had seen what they did to mudblood women. The sight of it, the smell. It had made him sick. The way those girls shook. They way they looked out at the crowd with wide eyes, like they were sure that there must be at least one soul amongst the hooded crowd that would show mercy. Even as the worst happened to them, they looked out for help. Draco could still taste the bile at the back of his throat he’d had to swallow back while watching.

Every commander had their own specialty for ending it. He’d only seen aunt Bellatrix's - the endless circle of Cruciatus - but he’d heard of the others and their methods. Avery, with his levitating and dropping. The Carrows and their slow, sculpting, butchery. And Dolohov. Dolohov with his twisted predilections…

Draco couldn’t bear to imagine it.

Hermione Granger was still there, at the back of his mind, still writhing in agony on his drawing room floor, looking at him for that same mercy as his aunt carved those letters into her flesh.

He’d spent so much time imagining her writhing beneath him, crying out in ecstasy, moaning his name. Now all his fantasies seemed to mock him. Her pleasure turned to agony.

Her face began to blur. The vision was Hermione one moment and his Governess the next. Their faces switched back and forth as they twisted and screamed, and suddenly it was no longer his memory of the drawing room, but a thousand other horrors; their wide eyes, their hoarse voices, as they endured them.

Another mudblood without help or mercy, and Draco doing nothing.

Had his father been there? Had his father witnessed those horrors being done to his Governess? Stood by? Had he participated?

Draco imagined her, on her knees, caked in mud, those beautiful, warm eyes seeking his father’s in the crowd.

His father, who had apparently _loved_ a mudblood.

Abraxas’ cold, didactic voice drew him back into the attic.

“Do you know what a mudblood-loving degenerate really is, Draco? They are worse than simply blood traitors, they are worse than mudbloods themselves.”

Draco fist clenched tight; every fantasy of Granger taunting him like a ghost. Every time he’d told himself he was pathetic and disgusting for wanting her. But always that endless, endless longing.

His Grandfather continued, his austere voice carving deeper and deeper into his head: “They are years of intelligence, breeding, acumen and magical purity, demented into filth. The pureblooded wizard who seeks anything beyond a quick serviceable fuck from scum isn’t worth the shite in that whore’s bowels.”

A burning lit inside Draco’s chest. A new rage, so engrossing that he could barely breathe.

And still, his Grandfather’s voice, pressing on -

“The mudblood-loving degenerate is perverted beyond being human,” his Grandfather bared his teeth in a broad sneer, “They should be cleansed in revels themselves.”

Draco hadn’t made the conscious decision to reach inside his pocket for his wand, but there it was.

“Your father no longer deserves the name of Malfoy, Draco,” Abraxas came to the edge of his frame, looking Draco sternly in the eye. “The line rests in you now. You must restore this family to its place. Do you understand? You must do what your Father was incapable of doing.”

 _He must do what his father is incapable of doing._ The words settled in him, and Draco felt the cold, certain calm of truth wash over his body.

“You’re right, Grandfather.”

Draco removed his wand from his pocket.

“If father hasn’t the nerve to do it, I suppose I have to.”

For the first time in his life, Draco looked his Grandfather in the eye with the confidence of his own power. Abraxas stilled, eyes narrowing.

And then the look of fear, astounding to behold, finally graced his Grandfather’s face. “Draco?”

The spell flowed through him with the power of a dam released:

_“Incendio.”_


End file.
